It's interesting how the simulated view makes errors in the terrain data obvious. The view from Santa Cruz island (off the coast of California) is almost completely obscured by single-pointed errors in the height map along the coast that didn't get cleaned from the data: https://caltopo.com/view#ll=34.0505,-119.8665&e=30&t=n&z=3&c...
There is a widely spread myth that Mt. Diablo in Oakland has the second largest viewshed in the world after Mt. Kilimanjaro[1]. With this tool you can actually compare them directly, which is pretty cool:
Not to be flippant, but it's fascinating to think how an average airline passenger may trivially (and very approximately!) match or even beat such a land-based record simply by looking out the window at 40,000ft. *about twice Kilimanjaro's elevation, for the record.
Many semantics potentially apply, of course! But the principle is there. The principle that, for many decades now, humans have been matching the entire planet's largest natural viewshed, as a trivial matter of course during the everyday usage of technology, and barely even noticing most of the time...
This is very useful for vhf and uhf radio communications as well, which are normally* line of sight.
In fact, the adsb-receiver[1] software package for setting up an aircraft tracking station includes a neat feature where you can use HeyWhatsThat to calculate maximum line of sight distances to aircraft at various altitudes and include these contours on your aircraft tracking map.
* atmospheric phenomena such as density or humidity differences or reflections from other aircraft, the moon, or even meteors can enable reception over the horizon.
It’s also baked into tar1090[1] which is a little more maintained of a package and pretty easy to get set up if you’ve got an SDR and 1090MHz antenna to track planes.
It’s a fun little hobby - where I live there really isn’t much of a reason to do it as there are enough other 1090MHz receivers in the area, but it still is cool when I look and see obscure jets flying overhead.
We actually added this as a feature to our sharing software at Plane Finder using our own modelling.
If you sign up and then view your stats on the web you can compare your actual to the predicted.
https://planefinder.net/coverage
This is a well polished app, which has non-trivial technical solutions (the AR view works very well and must not have been so simple to implement reliability on a miriad of different android devices).
What a treat that the default location is Mt. Battie in Maine! I saw the tower up there from town just about every day growing up. Fun to see it pop up online!
"""One of the first attempts to initiate the geotagging aspect of searching and locating articles seems to be the now-inoperative site Wikinear.com, launched in 2008, which showed the user Wikipedia pages that are geographically closest to one's current location.
The 2009 app Cyclopedia works relatively well showing geotagged Wikipedia articles located within several miles of ones location, integrated with a street-view mode, and 360-degree mode."""
GeoImageViewer, not an overlay but side-by-side view of photograph and maps. Clicking the image anywhere (not just precalculated pois) shows corresponding location in map and vice-versa.
https://hdersch.github.io/
I’d like to be able to determine the location of a landscape photo. Should be able to calculate the panorama for 5x5 mile regions of earth, and use some matching algorithms to find the closest profile to my picture.
I mentioned GeoImageViewer in a reply above. It contains several algorithms to determine the location of a landscape photo given some control points selected on a map. It is also able to determine lens parameters (fov, distortions,...).
https://hdersch.github.io/
Wild, I was going to submit this to HN about a week ago and I hardly ever submit anything. Just slipped my mind. Weird how much the active users on this site think of similar stuff at the same time.
This site also holds that distinction of being niche and useful enough for me to want to remember it but then I forget its name every so many years and have to ask around since it's hard to search it.
However, you could replicate the functionality/outputs (for a given location) by using open source GIS software, any available free geospatial data, and basic long-established GIS techniques: the DEM, the cross section, and the viewshed.
One thing I constantly look for in new place is where can I see sunsets? Where can I see unobstructed views of town? Which hill in San Franscisco can I climb to see panoramic sunset?
It would be great to take this tool to next level to answer such questions.
I was thinking the same thing. I recently found apps that let you see the direction of sunrises and sunsets (as well as moon directions) for any given location, but you wouldn't really know if the view is obstructed.
- https://caltopo.com/map.html#ll=40.10094,-105.61557&z=15&b=m...
- Right click and select "Simulated View"
- Change to "WireImagery" in the upper right